Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 11-July-10
Spoiler Rating: High

You Only Live Once (1937)

Just a few short years after Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were gunned down to the intense fascination of the American public, director Fritz Lang drew from their story to make the bleak romantic drama You Only Live Once. But unlike the popular outlaws, who committed robberies and murders with apparent nonchalance, the characters in the movie are essentially moral people who cannot live down or outrun the stigma of a tarnished past. In this sense they are sympathetic victims, and they endure enough trauma to fill a couple of films.

You Only Live Once opens on Joan, a sweet, cheery secretary who works for a public defender. She is played by Sylvia Sidney, one of the loveliest women ever to grace the screen, so it is little wonder that she has many men pursuing her. Unfortunately for them and the older sister who worries about her, Joan has eyes for one man only: Eddie (Henry Fonda), her longtime beau who is just completing a third stint in prison. Eddie is determined to make good this time, which is just as well since another conviction would put him behind bars for life. But good intentions don't always yield good results. On their wedding night the couple is ousted from a honeymoon suite when the motel owner recognizes Eddie from an old mug shot. Then, after a month or two of honest work, Eddie loses his job because one minor mistake confirms his boss' bias against ex-cons. The guy can't get a break. Even Joan unwittingly contributes to his suffering by taking possession of a small house he promised her before he knew his money would run out.

When Eddie is framed for a fatal bank robbery the law does not question his guilt, and before a viewer has fully processed the injustice of his situation he has a date with the electric chair. The film's middle act is plain harsh, with Eddie venting his anger on a heartbroken Joan as he is pushed beyond the limits of his decency. This culminates in a nasty twist of fate, after which the couple is reunited on the lam.

Up to this point it is not easy to predict the movie's twists and turns, but from here on one can see where Joan and Eddie are headed. This is when the picture assumes its most romantic aspect. The title does not readily pertain to a jailbird struggling in the outside world or a death-row inmate's bitter throes, but it does pertain to a young husband and wife running from the law. The meaning is something like "you only live once and it can be brutal, so if you're crazy in love you might as well cling to that and let everything else be damned." For Joan and Eddie, "everything else" includes their dreams of a normal life, people who care about them (or her, specifically), and even their newborn child. Their ordeals have narrowed their range of vision to one another, so they attain a kind of shield from the threats that plague them. There is beauty in their myopic, desperate love. And sadness when it comes to an end.

Copyright © 2010 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.